A few observations:
Resurrecting these memories reminded me of just how often people really do deliver for each other with no expectation that their effort be rewarded. It gave me hope and the incentive to try to do the same.
I’m not a bucket list person. Most people don’t have that luxury. It is a privilege to enjoy the rewarding cycle of being curious, trying something new, failing a bit and succeeding. I still want to try hard things and to finish what I’ve started. Between about six-teen and fifty-five years old the “hard things” and the “had to” was a way of life. Now it is a choice. It never want to stop taking risks and trying.
I love the breaking of a glass at the celebratory end of a Jewish wedding… representative of life’s fragility and the reminder to us all to commit to pick up life’s pieces and try to create good. So, I conclude on a sobering story because life is messy and our world is a mess. Creating the chance to say thank you is my way of picking up a few pieces of broken glass.
Finally, when did we stop putting a space between sentences? There are some things I’m just incapable of evolving.
2019: Dear Jordan Casteel, A glorious final outing
Dear Jordan,
My Mom, Mary Hoagland raised us un Denver and loved witnessing your work and career. She remained in great health most of her long life and we usually happily spent time with her at her home during our visits to Denver.
2019: Dear David Rosenblum, Heaps of perspective
Dearest David,
Dr. Seuss, cheese, Barnie, cookies, wind in your hair… you had remarkably simple needs for someone who endured way too much in your courageous and too short life. Not a day goes by that I don’t gain perspective and patience from your memory.
2019: Dear Minneapolis Precinct 5 First Responders, When your husband goes bump in the night
Dear 5th Precinct,
I get it is all in the course of a shift to step into someone else’s crises, but there is nothing “routine” about waking up to the sound of your husband hitting the floor in the middle of the night.